The Woman Before You: An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist.... Carrie Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ my legs for him, at the store. At least we were in private here, behind a locked door.

      ‘Lean back,’ he said.

      I arched my back and let my shoulders rock back against his chest.

      ‘Now touch yourself,’ he said.

      We both watched me in the mirror. After a while I closed my eyes.

      ‘Keep your eyes open and don’t you dare come,’ he said.

      ‘I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ I said, though that was only half true.

      ‘Good,’ he said.

      I played with myself for a while. It felt great. We were both breathing harder.

      ‘Want to see something cool?’ he whispered in my ear. I could hear him grinning.

      ‘Yes,’ I breathed.

      ‘What’d you say?’

      ‘Yes,’ I repeated.

      He grabbed the remote that was on a low table beside the toilet. He hit a button, and the mirror in front of us dissolved and turned into a screen the size of the entire wall. On the screen was projected a film of people in a room. No, wait. It was a live camera.

      It was the party downstairs. I saw the guests I’d met; even more people had come. I picked out Val and Heidi, and the famous faces. They didn’t know we were watching. They certainly didn’t know what we were doing as we watched.

      I tried to shut my legs, but Matthew’s hand was there. My legs pressed tight against his hand, which felt so good I didn’t want to talk and spoil it.

      I’d stopped toughing myself, but I still felt on the edge of coming, with Matthew’s hand inching its way up around my thigh. Finally I said, ‘So does Val Morton come up here and take a shit without leaving the party?’

      Matthew laughed. ‘I don’t know what he does here. I don’t want to know. I don’t ask. When he showed me around his place, he showed me how the camera works. He thought it was funny. There was no one downstairs at the time.’

      Matthew pulled me back against his chest.

      ‘Unzip my fly.’

      I was shaking, but I did it. I helped him lower the zipper and get his dick out. He was so hard. The skin was soft as velvet. He put his finger inside me.

      ‘Touch me,’ he said. I did.

      After a while he shifted so that his dick was between my thighs.

      ‘I’ve got a condom in my purse.’ I was shocked by my own boldness. I sat very still, awaiting his response.

      He said, ‘What’s the rush? Let’s take it slow. Get to know each other. We’ve got all the time in the world.’ We sat like that for a few minutes, his dick between my legs, pressing up against me, his finger stroking gently inside me while the party guests sipped their drinks and chatted, never knowing we were watching them—or what we were doing.

      I bit down on my lower lip to keep from coming. He felt so good. Slow, hypnotized by pleasure, we were still fondling each other when he said, ‘We should go. It’s probably okay that we’re here. Val would think it’s funny, too. But you never know what’s going to cause a major incident.’

      I jumped up off his lap and pulled down my dress. The last thing I wanted was a major incident. And I didn’t know if I wanted a famous movie star thinking this was funny.

      ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

      ‘Of course not,’ Matthew said.

      As we were leaving, he said, ‘Wait a second.’

      I leaned against the door and watched him piss in the toilet. Then we straightened ourselves up and did one last check in the mirror.

      ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Open the medicine cabinet. That one, on the wall.’

      ‘Really?’ I said.

      He said, ‘That fat amber colored bottle of pink pills. Take it. Put it in your purse.’

      ‘I couldn’t.’

      ‘You could. Val and Heidi have more. They have plenty. They don’t leave the house without them. You’ll thank me.’

      ‘What are they? The pills?’

      ‘Happiness in a bottle,’ he said. ‘My gift to you. One a day. Don’t overdo it.’

      We returned to the party, and we walked through the crowd, arm in arm.

      I thought: I still hardly know anything about him. We haven’t had actual sex. But for the moment I felt comfortable, almost as if we’d been lovers for years. Anyone who saw us would have thought we were a couple.

      I gave him my claim ticket, and he retrieved my coat from the clipboard girls. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them. The doorman opened the door. Matthew and I went outside. He let me go first, very gallant and cool for a guy who’d just fingered me in the host’s bathroom and made me steal his drugs.

      The night was cold and clear. Matthew hailed a cab and put me in it and gave the driver what I could tell would be more than enough money for me to get back to Greenpoint, tip included.

      ‘I’m sorry. I can’t leave, after all. I have to stick around till the end. It’s my job.’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Weird job, huh?’

      Only later would I learn just how weird Matthew’s job was.

      I would have stayed to the end of the party with him. But he hadn’t asked. Had he kicked me out of Val Morton’s apartment? Or had he protected me from something I wasn’t ready to experience?

       Matthew

      Val Morton’s new superstar cardiologist talked him down to one cigar a week, and because Val Morton saw his cigar as a sociable thing, and because Heidi was involved with her charities and he didn’t like to drink alone, he’d text me to come see him, and he would ply me with brandy and light up a cigar and talk about his favorite subjects.

      One of those subjects was how he’d always wanted to direct. He didn’t care where or how, film or TV or theater, a music video for fuck’s sake, he wanted to be the one deciding the narrative, making decisions that weren’t just about money. I always wanted to ask why, with his private fortune, he couldn’t just find a project he liked and finance it himself. But I didn’t say that, because I knew that what Val really meant was that he wanted someone, preferably someone important in Hollywood or on the New York stage, to ask him to direct. I thought: Everyone wants something—something they can’t and don’t have.

      One night—clearly Val had started drinking some time before I arrived—he again got onto the subject of directing.

      He said, ‘For now СКАЧАТЬ